The New York Times, a great source of well-done visualizations, has made a video explaining how the half-pipe works. Within the video, there is a combination of 2D and 3D visualizations that try to help explain what is going on. It is interesting to see how they seamlessly move between video, 3D animation, and 2D visualizations – and to think about why the choose the different styles to make different points.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/sports/olympics/olympics-interactives.html#tab0